24th October 2011 Archive

It’s been a year since Microsoft revamped its mobile offering with Windows Mobile 7, which was greeted with cautious enthusiasm by critics and punters alike. It’s taken a while, but we’re now seeing the first major update with version 7.5 (aka Mango) appearing on the solidly built HTC Radar, which also includes a 5Mp camera.

Some obituaries of the late Steve Jobs praised the Apple founder as saviour of the newspaper industry. That’s hard to justify. While one of Jobs’ achievement was undoubtedly exploding the idea that people won’t pay for digital stuff, a newspaper business “saved” by the iPad won’t look anything like the old newspaper business. It will have to be much, much smaller.

Parrot’s AR.Drone quad 'copter has been quite a hit with the radio control crowd, but its £300 price tag puts it out of most people’s price range. Griffin’s new Helo TC, on the other blade, is affordable enough to be a fun little treat for the more casual weekend flier.

Google has joined the gaggle of companies lusting over the ailing search'n'content giant Yahoo, according to rumours in the Wall Street Journal. Google has been in talks with private equity firms, says the WSJ, counting the beans they'd need to bag the company, though nothing formal is on the table.

Seagate shipped more drives in its latest quarter but earned less profit as it took rare earth cost increases on board and walked away from price competition. Amazingly it could overtake Western Digital next quarter though.

Fears that Blu-ray is facing early extinction seem woefully misplaced after experiencing the Jurassic Park trilogy on the format recently. Feature rich and re-engineered in 1080p hi-def with 7.1 lossless audio, this high resolution three disc set delivers T-Rific quality and hours of extras to tempt collectors and film fans to upgrade from DVD.

Sometimes it's not that you don't know enough. You know too much, and then someone's just sent you an email. And another one. and another. Whether you're in IT, running the business or one of those pesky users, it's hard to get on top of your work when work gets on top of you.

The Netherlands have the fastest internet connections in Europe according to a State of the Internet report by Akamai, with more than 68 per cent of Dutch broadband lines clocking in at 5Mbit/s or more.

The worst kept secret in mobiles is out. Nokia will launch its first three Windows Phones this week, and since everyone in the industry has already seen them, except the media, it was inevitable details would trickle out before the announcement on Wednesday. When you lose control of your platform, you lose control of your leaks.

Oracle co-founder and CEO Larry Ellison might have poured cold water on the idea of clouds a few years back – actually, it was more of a stream of warm lager-like liquid – but he is now firmly behind owning and operating public clouds that run applications.

How much risk can your IT department tolerate? There’s always going to be a certain amount of it. The trick is working out where to put it so that it causes the least damage. And to do that, you need to understand how risk fits into the broader world outside the IT department.

Server giant and networking player Hewlett-Packard and networking giant and server player Cisco seem to have buried the hatchet. Admittedly, it is a pretty small hatchet and they are still brandishing pikes pointed at each other's guts. But they are not fighting.

WikiLeaks will temporarily stop publishing so members can address a cash shortage that could cause the whistleblower site to financially collapse by the end of the year, founder Julian Assange said on Monday.